When comparing Bootstrap vs Material UI, the Slant community recommends Bootstrap for most people. In the question“What is the best CSS framework?”Bootstrap is ranked 2nd while Material UI is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Bootstrap is:

Bootstrap is developed to be instantly compatible with all sizes of screens, so you don't have to worry about which device the user is accessing your site from. Yet if you prefer, you can disable responsiveness of Bootstrap.

Pros

Pro

Responsive design philosophy

Bootstrap is developed to be instantly compatible with all sizes of screens, so you don't have to worry about which device the user is accessing your site from. Yet if you prefer, you can disable responsiveness of Bootstrap.

Pro

Consistency across browsers

The grid layout with the predefined CSS elements and JavaScript components make it easier to have consistency across different browser versions and even different devices.

Pro

Designed to get a site running quickly

Bootstrap is designed to get a site up and running quickly. Each of it's components is pre-configured to help with getting a site up and running quickly.

Pro

Well documented

Documentation is thorough, well organized and full of live examples and templates ready for use. Every component and every part of the framework is explained and covered in depth.

Pro

Great community

Bootstrap is very popular and has a large community. As a result of this it is much easier to find help with anything you might need. This also gives you a treasure trove of prebuilt components to use and add to your site.

Pro

A wide variety of themes available

To help you avoid the "Bootstrap look", there are many resources that provide a great selection of themes and templates for Bootstrap.

Pro

Customizable

Bootstrap can be customized in a variety of ways. Either by overriding the default CSS styles with new CSS styles or by editing the .scss Bootstrap files.

Pro

Supports responsive embeds

Pro

One of the most popular ones

Pro

Easily make professional looking websites

Bootstrap makes it easy to learn how to make professional looking websites. It can even make code junkies semi-enjoy design.

Pro

Custom builds

If you don't want to download the full Bootstrap framework. Custom builds of Bootstrap can be created, including only the desired CSS, CSS components, and JavaScript components. This can be done directly from the Bootstrap website by simply choosing what components to download.

Pro

Builders

Pro

Perfect for React projects

Really convenient and easy to use components

Pro

Adheres really well to the material design standard

Really nice implementation so far

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Cons

Con

Large file size out of the box

Bootstrap has an out-of-the box filesize of ~276K, which is pretty large considering it's just CSS. Most of those styles aren't even used in 90% of web pages built with Bootstrap. By only including the required styles it can be trimmed by 70%-75%.

Con

Websites can start to look the same

If the initial Bootstrap colors and styles are not changed or edited, different websites start looking the same even if they have nothing to do with each other and they are made by different developers.

Con

Too many classes

Bootstrap's over-reliance on HTML classes for styling can get very messy very quickly. There's also an overabundance of DOM elements which have a lot of classes and are more often than not nested inside DOM elements with even more classes. This gets problematic down the line because the maintainability of the project gets harder when the project starts to get large.

Con

Hard to customise

It's quite hard to customise Bootstrap using pre-processors like SASS and LESS, the only real flexibility is with typography and colours.

Con

Active development means API changes are frequent

Might be a problem for large projects, but since active development is a good thing, you should consider this rather mild inconvenience weighed against the benefits.

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